


Fire Burns, But Water Cools

by Regency



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent Issues, Domestic Violence, Dubious use of powers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Drugs, Sirens, pyrokinesis, references to rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 11:47:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5625502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regency/pseuds/Regency
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Harry is a firestarter. Eggsy is a landbound siren. One may destroy with a look or a touch, and the other with a song, but maybe they won't destroy each other. Maybe, just maybe, they‘ll save each other, instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it's another weird AU. You're welcome.
> 
> Inspired sort of randomly by this [gifset](http://wonderlandinmymind.tumblr.com/post/117814766763), and by this [edit](http://abaddonais.tumblr.com/post/132964065538) and of course this [post](http://awesomehartwintrash.tumblr.com/post/132960590524/abaddonais-thanks-for-the-warm-reception). [Firestarter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrokinesis)!Harry + [Siren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_\(mythology\))!Eggsy = whatever this is. (Blame this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MATKtjyJ50), too.)

 

 

There wasn’t much to know about Harry. He was fifty-three. He was a tailor. He lived alone save for a small dog--albeit a dead one, but one whom he had loved dearly in life, dearly enough to have him stuffed and mounted on a plaque in his bathroom. That was one of the reasons he lived alone, though not the only reason, by far.

The most important thing to understand was that Harry Hart was not real. He was a fabrication, a put-on, an act. Only he had played the part so thoroughly for so long a time that there was very little else to him save that fundamental fact. Ah, and his... _knack._

Harry had a worrying ability to make things burn. 

Don’t misunderstand, Harry wasn’t a pyromaniac. He didn’t have an proclivity for seeing objects burned to a cinder; they simply tended to go up in flames when he was around. He’d get angry and his skin would grow hot, his fingers hotter still till tongues of fire licked from their tips to set anything close at hand alight. Sometimes, if he stared hard enough and steadily hated without enough of his might, he could ignite distant objects without leaving his chair. On the odd occasion that he was happy, he shot sparks.

They were quite legendary in his mind for their rarity.

In over five decades on Earth, Harry had not had occasion to be happy much.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Eggsy would swear on his life that he’d only gone inside on a dare. Old man Zelazny’s tailor shop was close by and he and the lads were dead bored, having already eaten in deference to Eggsy’s empty stomach and having exhausted the best routes for free-running on the block by midday. Jamal had himself a date in a few and Ryan had work, which left Eggsy to pick his way home to the same shit show as always. He wanted a distraction first and what better distraction was there than a harmless bit of fun with the locals?

Eggsy knew he was gonna mess with this one bloke soon as he saw him through the display window. He was reed thin but substantial, the type so stiff a stiff wind might take offense at for refusing to bend. Forget that he was fit for a geezer, too; Eggsy was here to play, not get shot down by a public school twat gone to seed. _Gotsta be the new owner._ Eggsy brushed some dust off his shoulders and checked his reflection in a side mirror attached to a car parked out front.   _Lookin’ good, feelin’ good._  Eggsy liked to look his best, _himself_ had nothing to do with it.

Eggsy tipped his head toward the tailor’s across from the Black Prince.  “That’s the one.”  Ryan and Jamal exchanged skeptical looks. “Wot? You think I can’t handle ‘im? Look at ‘im. Bit o’ fun might do him some good.”

Another dodgy look. Jamal rubbed his hands together and tucked them under his arms.  “Ya sure about that, cuz?

“You doubtin’ me?” His best mates had a reputation for being up for anything. That’s how they’d become friends in primary, daredevil stunts and double dog daring. Twenty years later, they were still trying to top him.

Ryan sucked his teeth, kicking at the concrete.  “We just sayin’, mate, ‘e ain’t like ol’ man Z that had eyes in back of his head. He’s got tech up to his eyeballs and he ain’t scared to press charges if he catches you messin’ about. You jus’ got out clean, no need to be goin’ back in so soon. Give the marshies time to miss ya.”

“We wouldn’t know what to do without ye,” Jamal added after an elbow to the ribs from Ryan.

Eggsy leaned on the wall of the Black Prince, one eye on his friends and the other the solitary figure tirelessly wiping greasy fingerprints from the exterior of Marek Zelazny’s tailor shop. It had opened its doors well after the second World War, following the death of his parents, a tailor and seamstress who’d brought he and his siblings to England to escape the atrocities occurring in Western Europe. Rumor was they’d been spies for the Allies and they’d been made, leaving a young Marek as the sole breadwinner for his brothers and sisters, equipped with only one real skill of worth: tailoring. He’d turned what should have been an odd job into a seventy-year legacy.  Eggsy respected that; this new bloke on the block, though, him he wasn’t so keen on.

The Zelazny name might still hang on the shingle, but everyone knew it was someone else running the show these days, not that Eggsy had much reason to visit. The few job interviews he’d ever gone on hadn’t required a suit and the jobs that would have wouldn’t have him with his record anyhow. He just borrowed his dad’s old one for court appearances and that was that. He didn’t need a suit any more than he needed another run-in with the pigs. This was a curiosity and a lark, and his life would be DOA without a lark or three a week. His mind was made up.

“Give us a bit. I wanna see what he’s about.”

Jamal tried to call him back. “Egg, bruv, maybe--”

“Jus’ wait me for me at the Prince. Drinks on me, I’m good for it.”

“Don’t ‘e always say that, “ Ryan asked at his back as Eggsy took advantage of a break in traffic to dart across the street.

“He is, though.”

Eggsy jangled his pockets for the flask of river water he carried wherever he went. He wanted to see what this new man was made of and he knew just how to go about it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harry torched another panel of muslin he was attempting to fashion into a pattern for a suit and dropped it into a metal trash bin to watch it wither to a pile of blackened soot. Much like the client for whom it was intended, the task of making this suit was beginning to seem impossible.  Harry’s inability to concentrate wasn’t helped by his recollection of last night’s prowlers.

He’d been awoken by the sound of laughter, not unfamiliar at all hours in this neighborhood. It was a group of young people--no more than seven, no fewer than four, he’d wager; perhaps even some he knew. He’d been prepared to return to sleep when he heard the distinct sound of shatterproof glass being struck. Most of the other local businesses in the area favored burglar bars in their windows over the more expensive tempered panes. Except for Marek. He’d spared no expense in having them installed on Harry’s recommendation and they’d paid dividends during the riots in 2011, and in smaller skirmishes in the interim. There was just the small problem of Harry, or rather Harry’s flashbacks, triggered by circumstances.

Harry removed his glasses to grind his palms into his aching eyes, ruthlessly quelling the impulse to take another walk outside. He’d scarcely slept a wink after he came downstairs to check that the retractable security barrier in front of the store was in place, only to find a crowbar and pillow case abandoned on the doorstep. Further inspection had revealed a number of bins stacked in back of the store beneath the flower box of his upper-level flat. Whomever his would-be intruders had been, they had not been without a plan. It wasn’t that fact which haunted his sleep till the wee hours ceded to grimy dawn, but the idea that he would have found himself trapped, again, under someone else’s power.

Nothing good had ever come of Harry being cornered.

He counted back from ten as the smell of chintz on fire filled his throat. He could taste every color smoldering, each thread that had composed his mother’s favorite curtains popping as the hand-stitched seams scorched away to nothing. The floor by then was already awash in flames, the overwhelming stench of wood varnish bubbling under immense heat made his head swim--he’d never be able to forget that smell. He coughed, nasal passages raw to aching in memory of those acrid fumes.  He blindly grabbed for a fabric sample, a linen blend it must have been, and he counted once more from ten, breathing deeply at each number, rubbing furiously at the weave of the swatch until he felt only its pattern under his fingers, not the tufted wool fringe of a ruined Persian rug he’d not touched in forty years. 

The linen began to wilt in his grasp and it was only the tell-tale sound of the entry bell chiming that stopped Harry turning the delicate lilac swatch a damning coal black. Harry dropped it anyway; it was the wrong fabric for this suit. All wrong, like everything else.

Harry abandoned his pattern-making to tend to his next customer, hoping the smell of wilted linen wouldn’t cling too terribly to his person. Burning clothing was unlikely to fill his visitor with confidence.

 _Unless I’ve judged too quickly_ , he thought upon glimpsing the very young man taking stock of the shop’s vast array of neckties.  He was dressed in baggy jeans (very good knockoffs, by his reckoning), a striped Fred Perry polo, a non-descrip jacket of unimpressive design, and a pair of expensive trainers Harry could scarcely have afforded himself.   _Of the neighborhood, then._ Conspicuous consumption in the Council Estate was the same as it was anywhere: a matter of status.

Harry concluded upon a second glance that the boy was fresh-faced, not baby-faced, so probably not as young as he first appeared. Twenty-five at the most. He had a look of curiosity about him, something Harry appreciated in his customers. Curious minds could be convinced to buy and Harry was in the mood to succeed at _something_  after the morning he’d had.

“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to Zelazny Tailors.”

The young man furrowed his clarion brow and took a conspicuous look around.  “Tailors? As in more than one? I thought you was the only one working here.”

“I am for the moment. Nonetheless, that is still the name of this establishment.” Harry retrieved this morning’s coffee from the checkout counter to conceal a subtle eye roll. The last thing he needed was a tedious argument with a charming pedant to cap off this disastrous week.

His visitor made a nonsensical gesture of comprehension, his gaze drawn unerringly to the walls of umbrellas, cuff links, tie pins, briefcases and shoes bookending the showroom.  He came over a little starstruck taking it all in, and Harry was reminded of his first visit to the shop as a man of similar age.

 _Those too long deprived of beautiful things will covet them at first sight._ Marek’s words.

Harry suppressed a nascent sigh and turned to reconciling the week’s receipts at the till, pen in hand and coffee at the ready. His customer would surely summon him if he were needed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Eggsy was definitely coveting some flash accessories at the moment. That Bremont dupe on the high shelf was calling his name. He spied the tailor working at the counter like he hadn’t a care in the world, even if his face didn’t agree.  He had one of those bullish faces at rest, always in a dither at his best.   _Suits him, though_ , he thought, and put the thought to bed, one hand testing the sleekness of a Hufflepuff yellow-and-black striped tie whilst the other slipped a pair of camel-skin driving gloves into his jacket.

Up at the counter, the older man took a sip of his cuppa and made a face. _Must’ve gone cold,_  Eggsy reckoned, between glances at the neatly stacked button-up shirts and cardigans lining the display tables. He had to admit the inventory had improved since he’d come with his mum to buy a suit for his dad’s memorial service. The shirt and trousers had been starched to hospital corners and they had smelled of floral air freshener so strongly Eggsy thought his suit must have been soaked in it. The negative association put him off suits and Zelazny’s to this day. But the stock out now was nice, supple to the touch; every bit smelled clean, like bed linen right after wash day. Eggsy could see himself wearing some of this, provided he had a good enough reason to bother.

Eggsy heard a sigh and turned to see the tailor sipping peaceably from his cup, his coffee steaming. Eggsy frowned a bit. He hadn’t even heard the man go.

“Say, ain’t you the one that took over from old man Zelazny?”

“Yes, Harry Hart, that’s me. And you are?” He seemed more than a bit interested to know.

Eggsy demurred, “Just looking. I was curious, is all.”

“Very well.” Hart waved toward the modest showroom. “Look your fill. I’ll be here at the counter should you need anything.”

“Cheers, bruv.”

Humming, Eggsy examined the wall of shelves stacked high with bolts of fabric. Each one was eye-catching for its luxury, the makes sumptuous and the colors bold. Eggsy braved touching one, something deep blue with a subtle golden thread running through. Some kind of wool, he thought. It was fine, thick and not quite coarse, substantial in a way he didn’t have words for. He could see it making a suit that combated the need for a coat until the cold really set in, in August. Not like Eggsy’s threads that he wore in layers, and not just to stave off the blows that kept coming. Eggsy didn’t know why he’d let himself look; it wasn’t as if he could shove a bolt of fabric down the back of his jeans and run for it

 _Came here with a purpose. Let’s see about it._  He took a deep breath and envisioned salt till it washed over the walls of his mouth, scraping over his taste buds with the tide. He felt the tide roll in and out again. Reaching past the gloves, he took hold of the flask he’d kept hidden.

He didn’t plan to hurt him, just to see what he was made of. Old man Z had taken one look at Eggsy on the threshold of his store the one time he’d thought of coming back, and turned him right out. Eggsy’d faced his share of prejudice, dressing like he did and talking like he did, but Old Z had never seemed the type. When Jamal and Ryan had gone in, they’d done their business without a single snide remark. Turned out, it wasn’t Eggsy’s type he didn’t trust, it was Eggsy. Were Eggsy in an honest mood, he’d admit that the old man had had the right of it. He’d been spitting mad and up to no good that day, fresh off a fight with Dean over Daisy’s special formula, just wanting somebody to take all that helpless rage out on. He wanted an excuse to mess with someone.

Maybe he still did.

His mum was always telling him, “Never act in anger,” with her fingers crossed behind her back.  For people who were used to catching it on the chin, they did it all the time.

It would be fine, though. Eggsy wouldn’t do any harm. It wasn’t personal, he was just...curious.

He twisted open the flask, and the storm descended.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harry trembled.

There was this smell. Raw as sewage yet earthier somehow. It was everywhere. There was a texture to it, flowing into his mouth to grab hold of him from within. He knew this feeling; he fought for dear life against it.

 _“Do not touch me again,” he told the figure gasping through pained tears on the floor of the abandoned brewery. They whimpered--he did, Harry didn’t care to think about him, or his grotty hands in Harry’s hair, on his skin, forcing his jaw wide. “Never touch me. Next time, I’ll burn it_ off _.”_

_He grabbed what he could see of his possessions, leaving aside his dinner and a tidy sum of bank notes he’d earned that day, and he retreated to the one place that promised to be as vile as it could be kind: London’s streets._

Harry swallowed a grotesque whimper.  A public display of vulnerability was the quickest way to find oneself _belonging_  to another, in debt to them for protection and owing them any pound of flesh they might ask in exchange for their continued _compassion._

His vision swam. A song of the sea played, seagulls sounding, water crashing against outcroppings of rocks.  A trickle of notes in a young man’s voice moved him. Made him think of love and home, a honeysuckle sweetness tempting him onward. Because love wouldn’t lead him wrong.  Love never could.

...if it were really love.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hart stopped.

Eggsy maintained his grip on the flask, damp fingers slipping on the steel casing the more nervous he got. Eggsy usually went a bit chilly under the skin when he worked his magic, so this was a change.

Hart’s polished shoes creaked in evident distress. His feet wanted to move, Hart did not.  Hart was resisting.

Eggsy frowned.  He’d never seen someone resist successfully. Some had tried, but Eggsy had siren blood going back millenia; most had failed.

Fear and yearning and anger played across the man’s face, past the distance in his eyes. His hands twisted into veiny, mottled fists. He was half in a trance unlike Eggsy had ever seen. He had skipped wariness and gone to fury.

Eggsy kept going because Eggsy always saw his commitments through. Because he was scared of what other surprises might come if he stopped too soon. There was a method to his madness--there used to be.

_“Come now.”_

Hart came. One struggling step after another, joints uncooperative and teeth ground to groaning, he came to Eggsy. And Eggsy had to let him. Theirs was a curse that went both ways.

Hart reached him and his fingers drew just short of Eggsy’s cheek, far too close for comfort to Eggsy’s neck. Close as he deserved. Hart drew a finger along his jaw. It was Eggsy’s turn to tremble and tremble he did. He hadn’t expected Hart’s skin to be so warm.

Eggsy’s chest began to ache in time to his vocal chords; his voice cracked. He’d never struggled to sing before. 

Eggsy was a natural singer, untrained, perfect pitch, a seven octave range. He’d been in school choir when he was a kid and had only quit when his mum made him at age nine. She said it didn’t do to dream too much as it gave you so much more to lose. He’d sung anyway, here and there, doing talent shows and karaoke nights, even thought about applying to X Factor till Dean showed up and ruined everything. According to him, boys don’t sing, fairies do, and wasn’t no son of Dean’s gonna be a fairy. Never mind that Eggsy wasn’t any son of his. Dean paid the bills, Dean’s brutes manned the doors and ate the baby’s food, Dean half-brought Daisy into the world. Dean stayed and when Dean was around, Eggsy shut his gob.

But not on his own time. Eggsy could set himself against the world that vexed him when he only had himself to answer to. People like Harry had longstanding traditions of looking down on people like Eggsy.  Some thought he was a crime waiting to be committed while others considered him one more charity case for their do-gooder life story. When they looked at him, they never saw a person, just a statistic. When he needed their help, he was _someone else’s problem._

Despite the tenderness of his touch, the man’s gaze skewered Eggsy. His forbidding expression belied the strange trust in his eyes. He was trusting Eggsy. Which was the point, he supposed. Sailors trusted sirens to lead them to paradise in their waiting arms and they died for their faith, for their wrong-headed lust. Why shouldn’t Harry Hart?

 _But why_ should _he?_

“Bet we could have some fun times, old man.” His bravado wavered as Hart’s eyes darkened, pupils blown wide enough to swallow Eggsy.  There’d be nothing left of him.   _I’d deserve that, wouldn’t I?_

Much as he talked a good talk, Eggsy knew he was going to let the man go. He’d known that before he’d come.  He was going to do it because he wasn’t Dean, because Harry was a stranger who’d demanded nothing. Because Eggsy wanted to go home and see tomorrow. Because he wanted to be able to live with himself. Because there were _rules_  about what could be taken without offer, and Eggsy never broke them.

Hart smiled at him, handsome dimples indenting his cheeks. “Be careful what you wish for.” Words that might have been an invitation in another tone became a very soft-spoken warning.

A sulfuric odor suffused the air and Eggsy recoiled, knowing at once from where it had come.

Hart’s eyes blazed coal black, dilated wide, the irises shimmering a shade or two off from brassish-gold around the rim. Eggsy told himself it must have been the sun’s reflection in Hart’s eyes, told himself that brown eyes were more interesting than they looked, just not as interesting as all that. He told himself to breathe and look away. Break the bond. _Break it. Stop singing. The game’s over._

Hart smoldered from pupil to eyelid. Eggsy had not once in his years of living wild known eyes to smolder so hot the steam was seemed visible. Harry Hart burned and Eggsy sucked in a shuddering breath, trying to find the right note of the right melody that might free him from Harry’s heat. Sirens were creatures of water, but for the first time Eggsy was too aware of standing on gasping land. Shuddering, he toppled his flask from his pocket and Thames water doused his trouser leg and Adidas. He was altogether too afraid to avert his eyes to retrieve it. 

The older man lowered his foot to the ground as though he’d only missed a step and not been about to follow Eggsy into peak hour traffic for a snog.

“I think you should go.”

Eggsy swallowed, loud in the deathly quiet shop. There wasn’t a soul in sight save for Eggsy and the tailor. His boys were no closer than the opposite side of the street watching from a pub and none of the people milling out on the pavement seemed interested in suits today. Eggsy was on his own and, for whatever reason, his ‘invisible’ power wasn’t so invisible to Mr. Hart. Hart could _see_  him like others hadn’t and _hear_  him like no one else could.  That made him dangerous, and the embers clinging to his lashes even more so. There was nothing forgettable about this dotty tailor now.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harry had a perfect vision of immolating the boy where he stood. Harry could do it it from afar, easily. That way it would be impossible for witnesses to place him at the scene. But this offense had been personal; so should its answer be. He could grab his assailant by his generic, surely flammable lapels and set him off like fireworks in his hands. Harry could do that; he’d done it before.  Ash and bone, the boy would blow away on the wind and Harry would be fine.

Fire could not burn a firestarter, after all. They were the human equivalent of dragons with neither the wings nor claws or scales and hide. They had only fire, and fire burns all but itself, without mercy or bias to sway its divine judgment.

Harry was the perfect firestarter in that sense. He was unaccustomed to mercy, having suffered little of it, and he had no use for prejudice. He could be called in every way divine were Merlin to be believed. But Merlin lied and so did Harry.

Murderers weren’t divine.

Harry’s family had perished in a house fire when he was ten and, certain it was he that caused the blaze, he fled the scene in the dark of night and was presumed dead with all the rest. He grew up rough in the years that followed, living under bridges and inside abandoned warehouses between shelters, having found that life in placement could be its own special hell for sweet-faced boys with no one to account for them. He had little in the way of formal education, save what he could teach himself, and it was only through his unlikely friendship with technological wunderkind Merlin that he attained a modern identity that allowed him to move about in polite society. Due in part to Merlin's intervention, he was able to secure an apprenticeship in a family-run tailor shop in south London at the age of twenty-two, and there he had remained in service ever since.

Contrary to Merlin’s endless complaints, Harry rarely sought trouble, he was simply flypaper for mishaps the same as he was a magnet for nascent sparks of flame. Trouble, in recent years, however, had found him in the form of Dean Baker and his gang of brutes. Baker had collected protection money from the Zelazny patriarch for the past fifteen years, starting when he gouged out the eyes of the cretin that came before him and named himself successor to his criminal throne. Harry had hated the man since he was thirty-three and much faster to loathe strangers.

How he could have loathed anyone more than when he was a homeless adolescent was a wonder to him this many years hence.  Being transient had taught Harry to lie in the face of the ignorantly well-meaning and to scowl mulishly in the face of bullying threats. In the gawping face of the boy in his shop, he had found what could only be the latter.

“You should go,” he repeated to the bewildered, _bewitching_ young man. Harry knew his reckless mind too well, he had not _chosen_  to move.

“I--”

“I won’t repeat myself.” Harry coloured the words in banked fury he could not otherwise show. He’d burn his livelihood to the ground if he tried.  “Leave now, or I call the police and _they_ can assist you.”

Upon realizing that Harry would not yield, the younger man raised his hands and conceded, “I was goin’ anyway.”

“I’m happy to see we’re in agreement. Have a pleasant day.”

“Right back at ya, bruv.”

To his credit,  he only stumbled once in running away. Harry contented himself with the stink of bubbling rubber his egregious winged trainers left behind.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Eggy’s lunch churned in his gut as he skipped out of Zelazny’s and tried not to peer back over his shoulder, disbelieving that the owner would let him go when Eggsy had obviously been leading him by a string. _A mythical string. What was he’s supposed to do, ask if I abracadabra’d ‘im?_ Sirens were the stuff of legend because they were old, not because they weren’t real, but most people nowadays didn’t know the difference. Eggsy wasn’t sure Harry Hart was most people.

His mates met him at the door to the dodgy pub they’d been waiting for him at.

Jamal stopped him walking into the nearest brick wall staring back the way he’d come.  The store was dark all of a sudden and there wasn’t a hint of sun out. Typical London.

“All right, bruv? Saw you lookin’ spooked in there, but we wasn’t sure if you wanted us comin’ after ya.”

“He was onto me, cuz, and ‘e was well vexed when ‘e came out of it. I ain’t goin' back no time soon. He just about wrung my neck when he caught me croonin’ in his ear.”

“His loss, mate. Let’s go try out the skate park, see if we can get in round back. Sheila might leave the gate open for us.”

“Your girl’s aces, I tell you that?”

“Long as you remember who she comes home to, I ain’t worried about it, but I’ll tell her you said so.”

Eggsy glanced one last time at the desolate shop and laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harry shut down the shop until four when he had a standing appointment with a long-time customer and then Merlin was due for their weekly meal. He maintained a steady watch over the front door in case his visitor should deign to visit again.  He would be ready next time. It only ever took him once to learn to beware.

He sat nursing an early glass of scotch when the front bell tolled once more to herald someone’s entry. One hand remained in the worthy employ of getting Harry as soused as all hell while the other worked up a handful of fire.

“I’d suggest you put that way unless you’d like a head of sodium bicarbonate to go with that drink you’re having...” Merlin checked his watch. “...Very early in the evening,” he finished with a flick of his dark brows.  “Something the matter?”

He extinguished his flame. “I’m not sure I can explain it in a way you’ll believe.”

Merlin took the liberty of flipping the sign on the front door and bolting the lock.  “I’ll bring down the barrier on me way out.  Pour us a glass before you inhale it all.” Eighteen-year-old Lagavulin. Time had given Harry expensive taste and means enough to indulge.

Merlin joined him at the till and made himself at home on the counter with his drink.  “What’s this about me disbelieving the unbelievable?  You produce and control fire, Harry. If my worldview was going to be irrevocably shattered, I wager that would have done it.”

“There’s a boy.”

“That’s not at all new,” Merlin muttered into his Lagavulin.

“He can...he made me do something I’d not otherwise have done.”

Merlin lowered his glass. “What exactly do you mean?”

Harry knew Merlin often worried for his sanity, for his self-control. No one could remain in control forever. Something would break, that was how people were designed, to bend at considerable force and then break when all tolerable limits were exceeded. But Harry never had. Wasn’t it time?

“I don’t know, precisely. One moment I was here, behind the till, balancing the books, and the next I was approaching him. He was standing at the door, watching me. There was this smile on his face, smug, like he had planned it.”

“Did you touch him in any way?”

“His face, right before I told him to run for his life. He nearly pissed himself.” He was as pleased as he was dismayed by the recollection.

“Did he give you anything?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Did you have an open drink nearby?”

“No--wait, yes. There was my coffee. I’d left it out from the morning crowd. It was cold, I had to warm it to finish it. It was just there.” He gestured to where Merlin was perched.

“Could he have reached it without you knowing? Did you have eyes on him at all times?”

“No, I was working on a suit. One for another of Baker’s lackeys. It wasn’t...I was having trouble with it. I only came to the front when I heard the bell.”

“Meaning he could have dosed you.”

“If he did, it wasn’t foolproof.”

“Enough to coerce you a little. With a proper dosage he may have more luck.” Merlin downed the full glass of his ridiculously expensive Scotch and dropped down from the counter.  “I’m going to check the security cameras. I don’t like this.”

Harry massaged his brow. “I’m not wild about it myself.” He grabbed the decanter and his glass to follow his best friend to the rear of the shop where the security monitors were kept.  “But I’m not sure he meant any real harm.”

Merlin only walked faster. “You were drugged and you think he was having a giggle at your expense?” He grunted in annoyance.  “You could not possibly be so lonely as to take that as a come-on.”

Harry ignored that last remark, scowling.  “Not that, you paranoid nursemaid. What I mean is that he expected it to work, not for me to fight him. It got worse when I fought him.”

Merlin stopped.  “He...if he did something, you need to tell me.”

“You can stop pretending to be my guardian angel any time you like.”

Merlin grunted, “Never. If I find out later on he did anything but run away leaving a trailing of blazing smoke behind him, I’ll wipe him from the face of the Earth and not just electronically.”

“Charming.”

“You’d do it for me.”

That went without saying.

Harry had been on his own for a long time before Merlin came along, but he’d adapted quickly to having someone else to protect.  Merlin was the only family he had left.  Sadly, Harry’s methods of defense left a bit more evidence than Merlin’s characteristic mother henning.  Enemies in the know cowered before Harry, ignorant that it was Merlin they should truly fear. Harry could end lives if he had to, but Merlin, by his technological expertise, system by government system, ensured that they had never been. They made for a heady team.   _Think how much more dangerous we’d be if I existed._

Finally, something to laugh about.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_“You make amends when you hurt someone, otherwise you’re more concerned about getting away with it than making it right.”_

Eggsy had done a lot of community service with his various ASBOs and met a lot of probation workers. One had given him a self-improvement book that said that. He’d read it to the end and then dumped it in the donation box for the nearest library. That was all that had stuck with him; it was self-help enough.

Eggsy was scared shitless of what he’d seen, that didn’t mean he didn’t need to apologize. He wouldn’t have any peace in his head if he didn’t; he might not _survive_  if he didn’t.  He rattled about the neighborhood trying to get his head around what he’d seen. His mum knew he was holding back and his boys, too. Jamal was quick with picking up when he was off, and Ryan trusted Jamal to know Eggsy.  Even Daisy was working double time to bring him out of the clouds.  Eggsy was shit at carrying guilt.

As it was, he didn’t sleep well that night. He’d drop off and then he’d dream. Again and again, the same way.  Water and fire. Water and fire. Steam and smoke. Drowning and then burning alive. Always with Harry Hart’s hand on his cheek, so hot he’d leave a mark.  Harry didn’t wade into the surf on Eggsy’s command, he pulled Eggsy with him, bound by the touch of his hand.

Eggsy woke up gasping for breath and hard as nails inside his pyjama bottoms. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his neck and face. His mouth was dry as the summer sands.

It was the guilt, yeah, partially, only guilt never came over like a scarlet letter pinned to him, something anybody could see.  Eggsy couldn’t just see it, though, he could feel the prick in the shape of fingertips, hurting on his face. Other places, it wasn’t so painful.

Eggsy needed to make amends so that Harry wouldn’t track him down and finish whatever the hell it was he started in that shop.  Eggsy didn’t know what it was and he was scared to find out, but fear hadn’t stopped things from coming at him swinging, so that was fear right out.  His drill instructor’d told him that the key to any decent operation was intel. Eggsy needed intel.

Who was Harry Hart? Where did he come from? And what could he do--to Eggsy, to anyone?

Eggsy dug out his mobile and dialed a number he’d been avoiding for the better part of a six months.  He had a favor to call in.

* * *

 

Harry had known Chester King for a very long time, but Chester did not know him anymore. Chester had known Harry’s family when Harry was a boy and went by another name. He had been a dear friend to Benjamin Henry Wainwright and Samantha Hartwell Wainwright, and godfather to one Henry “Harry” Wainwright, the youngest and most troublesome of all. Harry had adored him for his upright carriage and unruffled demeanor, had done his very best to emulate his sense of style even then. He had wanted to be just like Uncle Chester.

He supposed, as he measured length between the man’s shoulder and fingertips some thirty-plus years hence, he hadn’t done too poorly.

Chester had begun patronizing Zelazny’s when Harry was a five-year veteran of the shop’s facilities. He had come in to buy a replacement set of gloves when his own had been left in a chippie and lost. He had been so impressed by their selection and by the service that he’d switched all his accounts to the little tailor shop in south London forthwith and had encouraged many of his peers to do the same, signifying a boon for Marek and for Harry himself. Harry hadn’t even been able to thank him in the way he would have liked, as they weren’t family anymore, merely distant acquaintances. Their last true meeting featured prominently in his nightmares in full sound and color:

_Chester kneeled just within the manor gates, gaping at the house as it collapsed wing by wing, each fallen wall becoming further fuel for its own demise.  Harry ran to godfather’s side the instant he was free of the blooms fulminating in his mother’s garden. He would never entirely forget the fragrance sizzling gardenias lent the air._

_“Mummy and papa are inside. We have to get them.”  He’d pulled at his favoured uncle.  “Come. Help me!”  
_

_Chester grabbed Harry before he could run._ _“What have you done, Henry? What have you done?”_

_Harry pulled at his rough hands, wanting only to go back to his mother’s rooms where he’d seen her sleeping.  If Uncle wouldn’t assist him, he’d ask his father, as soon as he found him._

_With a piercing yowl, the remaining windows of the house shattered all at once, shooting sparks and flames that were Harry’s friends, but that only smelled of baked things he wouldn’t eat and things, people he loved. An earth-moving groan began above their heads at the far end of the house, a sonic tidal wave hailing from the farthest dining room. Three seconds of it, fearsome and terrible, heralding the end of everything. In three seconds the last of the house, roof first, fell into ruin before Harry’s eyes, and took his family with it._

_Young Harry had vanished within the hour. He didn’t need to be told that no bodies would be found._

Chester had yet to give any indication that Harry was familiar to him and Harry hadn’t thought to share. He must have appeared different enough as to be unrecognizable after thirty-eight years. Best to let the dead rest, he’d thought, and so he had.

His encounter with that young man had made him weary and far too cognizant of how few people remained that he could trust. If only he could still count Chester among them.

With a solemn nod, Harry directed the man to examine Harry’s alterations in the tri-fold mirror. He was being fit for a tuxedo and tails. A white wedding, he’d said, chuckling.  Harry hadn’t laughed much. The night terrors had left him too tired.

Harry’s parents had known of his ability from the time he was three. That year he set his nursery ablaze no fewer than five times after being read the tale of  _The Too Little Fire Engine_.  He was enamored of the drawn pictures of the miniature fire engine battling its own tiny blaze and emerging victorious to be welcomed home by friends. He wanted to see his toys consumed and paint his walls the vibrant, varied colors of the flames. He wanted to save them.

Were they like other people his parents might have feared him for his ability, Only they weren’t afraid of him, they were afraid for him. They encouraged him from early days to keep his peculiarity to himself. Not just out of worry that his future prospects might be limited in their circles by the barest hint of taint, rather out of nagging concern that someone would draw close to Harry for the wrong reasons, to make malicious use of him as some winsome weapon. They feared for Harry, and they were right to do so.

Had they feared more for themselves they might still be alive today.

Despite his childish ambitions, Harry had early on surrendered any hope of becoming a firefighter. Even the most meticulously crafted identity would falter under too much scrutiny.  He had instead saved for years to own his own tailor shop. You see, he was very good at his job. Tailoring suits was his gift, one he didn’t fear and resent in equal measure. It kept body and soul together whilst maintaining his privacy and allowing him to continue to live under the watchful eye of the law.

When none of pater Zelazny’s children had opted to continue the family business, he chose Harry as his successor to ensure that his parents’ dream survived in some form. Harry knew something about keeping dreams alive. He’d accepted gladly.

Whoever that boy was, meeting him was the first time Harry regretted being unable to pack up all he owned and start anew someplace else tomorrow.  His roots fixed him firmly to London soil.  There was no place else to go.

Chester nodded, offering Harry’s reflection an approving smile.  “Beautifully done, Harry.”

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said and tried not to feel so desperately at sea.  It was another of his usual failures.

* * *

 

Whenever anybody pegged Eggsy as odd, they tended to blame it on his dad. Because he is dad was gone, because his dad had been a bit strange, hadn’t he? It had to be the man Eggsy only remembered in fits instead of someone who’d always been there. Lee had to be the one, because in their eyes, Michelle was just a sob story, not an influence or a force in her own right. To most everybody that knew them his mum was half-invisible, so the last thing they’d expect to hear was that Eggsy got it from his mother. 

It being his singing voice. It being his oft times shit taste in blokes. It being his eyes and his smirk and the golden blonde highlights in his light brown hair. It being his low-key love of flowers (Daisy’s name wasn’t a coincidence). It being the power that let him lead men off stairs face first the minute things turned dodgy on a date.  Eggsy was different because Michelle was; he’d learned to live with it.

That catch of _it_ was that Eggsy’s power only worked in conjunction with water. Any body of water would do, of any size or composition, provided it could be traced back to the sea. So long as he was in contact with it his song would lure anyone he chose to their doom (or some proportionate misfortune). Could be men or women or anyone of any gender, but it was mostly men he went for. Nothing against women, he liked birds just as much as blokes, he just figured they had enough against them without him bringing his shit into it. That was his mum’s doing, too. All he knew about what made him sing he’d learned from her, the best and worst source of information.

Luckily, he had other people to ask about other things. Like certain Oxbridge knob heads with fat trust funds and coke habits they were still pretending to shake three years in.   _At least that Hesketh fucker’s good for something._

 

Back when he was still dealing for Dean, Charlie’d been his best customer, but Eggsy’d given that shit up for the baby. He hadn’t wanted Daisy any closer to that life than she had to be. He’d never risk her finding some misplaced dime bag in his room and dying because Dean wanted to spread the risk around. That was probably the only fight with his stepdad Eggsy could say for sure he’d won.

That was why Eggsy took care not to be seen loitering near any of the old drop zones when he stepped out tonight.  The only move more dangerous than letting Dean think he was up for playing mule again was him thinking Eggsy was playing it for anybody else.  Dealers got competitive; Eggsy could lose a finger on both sides like that.

He was so overcome by déjà vu while walking the block that he had to remind himself twice that this was a prime one-off. The sachets of pure white he’d knicked off Rottie were burning holes in his pockets. He might as well have a target on his back.

Charlie had agreed to meet on the corner of Smith Street because Charlie had a sense of humor and he liked to remind Eggsy of his place, even when he was sniffing blow off Eggsy’s collarbone.

“You ever hear of Harry Hart?” Eggsy asked, head tilted back as he stared up at the dim sky. The view was rubbish between buildings this tall, but there was a hint of stars to be seen from the alleyway, and Eggsy had always been a fool for celestial navigation.  Blame the siren in him.

Sniffing, Charlie rubbed his dripping nose on a monogrammed pocket square. _Twat._  “What of him?”

Eggsy swiped his grubby sleeve over his neck. Charlie wasn’t a man he bothered dressing to impress. “Did he go to Oxford or Cambridge, one of the colleges? He says he did.”

Charlie sniffed. “I suppose he must have as my grandfather considers him a close personal friend. He only consorts with the best.”

That was a surprise. Eggsy had thought that talk about all the posh knowing each other was just that. _Guess not._

“Ye sure about that?”  Hart came across as the best, to be sure. The best of liars and tailors and the most dangerous of men.

“Quite. He’s been in service to the Heskeths since the eighties. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him at an alumni mixer, though. That’s...odd.” Charlie shrugged.  “I’ll look into it. Is that all?”

“You bet.”

“Good.” Charlie hooked those enormous hands of his around Eggsy’s face and pulled him in for an impassioned, clumsy snog. His lips were plush as pillows which Eggsy didn’t hate but there was too much tongue. He pushed too hard, bit too much, and tasted like he hadn’t eaten in days. In short, he tasted like Eggsy’s old life. When one of Charlie’s hands swept down his side, making him shiver in remembered lust, and groped at his flies with intent, Eggsy had to take a massive step away. The path to where he’d started was a circle; Eggsy wasn’t intending to go back.

“That’s enough o’ that. We good now?” He gestured toward the dime bag  Charlie was burning through way too fast. This was the second he’d brought with him.

“You don’t want to...?”

“I’m out of the business. Sorry, mate.” 

Not sorry, at all, in any way.

“Not even if I paid for it?”

“You still owe me money from _last_ year, Oxbridge. You don’t have a tab and I ain’t coverin’ ya, so no, not even if you paid me.  Cheers.” With a mocking wink, Eggsy flipped on his hood and headed back home. Charlie’s offended sniff had him laughing into his clammy hands.

He grabbed a fistful of flowers from a pretty garden he passed on the way and divided them in two. One bouquet he hid behind Daisy’s juice where he knew his mum would look in the morning and the other he tied to the bars of Daisy’s crib. Sirens were tied to the river or the sea, depending on who was doing the telling, but it was the _meadows starred with flowers_  that were often forgot. He dribbled some water from Daisy’s sippy cup onto the tip of his finger and drew a wet heart on her cheek.  _“Sleep well,”_ he sang into the dark, and so she slept soundly, free to dream.

Sirens weren’t only creatures of tragedy like all the stories told. Sometimes, they were creatures of love.

* * *

 

Harry dreamt of drowning. 

Stretched before him was a shore of blinding white sand where he walked barefoot and bare-chested. A choppy surf of dawn-lit waves beckoned him to swim. Though not usually one for water, Harry enjoyed the peaceful lap around the pool now and again.  His skin felt parched enough to bear it. He wanted to go.

Instantly, there he was, engulfed and immersed with water to all sides of him.  The world was tinted turquoise and teal, a blue-green gradient in every direction, skewered by beams of golden light from the sky above. The world above the rippling surface was a mystery and the shore he’d left a secret he instantly forgot. There was only the sea.

But Harry wasn’t a creature of the water.  Harry needed open air and wind, the sun and its heat.

Harry’s chest gave a shudder, yet he still held his breath and treaded water down below where rare dazzling light offered no warmth and the dark encroached by leagues.

Bluish-green eyes distinguished themselves in the distant surf to watch him struggle and with them appeared an angular, unearthly face. Harry forgot to breathe; he forgot to need it. His body didn’t forget; bubbles spilled from between his lips, dashing for the surface like he should have and failed to do. His chest heaved and he kicked off to save himself.

An echoing voice voice bid him to stop.

Harry stopped. Harry wanted to stop.

_“Stay.”_

He shuddered in memory of fear and loathing.  It was neither of those that made his heartbeat quicken as his creature swam toward him at speed.

Harry’s rapidly cooling lips met a pair that were startlingly cold, as cold as the hands that cradled his face.  It was a kiss of air and water, and he drank greedily of both.

 His vision dimmed as his opened his mouth and clung. He jerked bodily, his lungs seized. His eyes stung so he closed them to let himself _feel_  in peace.

Harry was going out like a guttered candlelight. 

How fitting.

He’d never dreamt of drowning before, much less  _wanting_ to drown and reaching for that end with open arms.  Harry had put work into staying alive, thirty-eight years of blistered feet and raw knuckles and callused palms.  Harry Hart had too often nearly died just to live.   This was electrifying, terrifying and new.

 His savior-slayer drew away, green eyes roiling in lust and triumph.

 _“Breathe,”_ he burbled.  He seemed to be tolerating the briny deep just fine.

Harry smiled at the beauty of him, of this Eggsy Unwin, and breathed deep. Only then did reality intrude on desire. Only then.

He gasped for breath and found only water.  He swam for freedom and found only a deceptively strong embrace.

Harry struggled.

Harry drowned.

Harry  _woke_.

He didn’t sleep again that night.

* * *

 

Eggsy paid another visit to Zelazny’s the following day, armed with a hint of knowledge and pockets full of suspicion. The shop was in disarray, delivery boxes stacked behind the counter where Hart was working.  When their eyes met over seasonal separates and Mont Blanc pen sets, Eggsy found the older man’s eyes were brown, not black. Mahogany as the stain on the wall panels toeither side of him.

“To what do I owe your swift return?” He blinked, seemingly innocent, and Eggsy’s hackles rose of their own accord. He loathed dangerous people who played at being harmless. They were the ones you trusted too soon and paid for it.

“I talked to some friends o’ mine and they say there’s no Harry Hart that graduated from Oxford your year.” One friend, an ex-fuck buddy he sort of hated, but that wasn’t Harry’s business.

The tailor continued to sort his inventory, taking the barest polite note of Eggsy.  “You have a lot of friends attending Oxford?” Eggsy took it as the slight it was intended as and ignored it.

“Hertford College, that’s what it says on the website, innit?”

Hart hummed, contemplative. “It is.”

“Mmhm, that’s a lie, though. You didn’t go, or if you did go, you didn’t finish. I know people whose dads went there and they never heard o’ you.”

Hart neatly clipped a loose thread off a new cardigan. “I assure you, the records are quite clear.”

“Fakes, all of ‘em. They’re fakes and I bet your name is as well. All this, the shop, the flat, the clothes, bought with a fake name.” Eggsy was trusting a hunch he had.

The older man slowed down to regard Eggsy candidly.  “The money is real.”

“Probably. Even my mum says you been around as long as she can remember, always worked hard and kept your nose clean, kept to yourself.  Said she thought you must’ve been running from you something ‘cause you was always runnin’ from everybody else. You ain’t had so much as a friend for thirty years. That’s wrong.”  Eggsy didn’t know why cared.

“It’s possible I’m a shit friend and I keep driving others away.” He gave up on looking harmless, stood ramrod straight with eyes whet to dagger keenness.  Eggsy unclenched that little bit more. He could deal with a real person, he couldn’t fight a saint.

“I don’t buy it. My mum chats shit about lots, not you, though. Bet she’s right on about you. What’re you running from?”

“If I’ve been running as long as your mother claims, I shouldn’t think it matters anymore.”

“Truth always matters, mate. It’ll come and get ya every time. Might be time to face it before it catches up to you.”

“I’m beginning to think it already has.”

Hart put down the cardigan he held and picked up a labeled cashmere jumper instead. His hands were elegant, stupid as it was to think. Broad, proud, neat hands. They touched each article of clothing with care. _He treats them like people._ He touched them like he’d touched Eggsy. Gently, knowingly.

Eggsy grimaced, wishing someone had thought to silence his dreams as he had Daisy’s.

* * *

 

Harry was accustomed to the stuff of dreams dogging his steps after he woke. Being haunted was his natural state, as it was for any man who had earned his demons young and been futilely attempting to outrun them in the decades since. He knew a haunted man on sight and Eggsy was haunted, and hunted, just the same.

“What do you want from me? You came for something and presumably returned for it as well. What is it?”

The young man, Gary “Eggsy” Unwin if Merlin’s research was to be believed, as it usually was, stared down at his flamboyant winged trainers, biting his lip. Harry fixated on that lip for a heartbeat too long; he swallowed and averted his gaze.  “I wanted to know who you are.”

“I told you that. My name is Harry Hart.”

The boy’s scoff was succinct judgement on the lie. “Forget that, then. _What_ are you? That’s what I can’t figure out. What was that? Your eyes went all...” Words appeared to fail him and Harry wasn’t feeling remotely generous enough to offer him any help. “I don’t understand it.”

“Genetic abnormality, and if we’re asking uncomfortable questions, tell me what was it you did to me?”  The last time Harry felt such a strong a surge of dread and lust he was a man even younger than Eggsy. To want what you cannot have desperately enough to risk death for it, that wasn’t a pheromone-fueled life capable of sustaining Harry indefinitely.  “ _Live, love, or die. Or be lucky enough to have two of the three.”_  Not Marek’s words; perhaps Harry’s father’s. He could no longer recall.

Eggsy wavered. “I wasn’t thinkin’ when I did that. I was. It was just a thing I can do, is what it is. Like what what you do, but somethin’ else.” He set his jaw, all of a taut angle from every view. He held back on words as Harry did, maybe even for Harry’s reasons.  Harry respected his need to stay alive.

“In the future, I’d advise you to be careful who you play your tricks on. You won’t be able to able to outrun them all, Eggsy.”

* * *

 

Eggsy tensed. “How’d you know my name?”

“Like you, I have friends in high and low places.” He smartly snipped another label off cashmere jumper, wearing a benign smile that sent chills up Eggsy’s spine and goose bumps down his thighs. That was usually his job, turning people on till their brains shut off and they did whatever he liked anyway.Not _that_ \--there were hard rules with _painful_ consequences for that--but almost anything else was fair game. He and Hart weren’t so different.

Besides, it wasn’t as if Eggsy couldn’t sense the tailor’s damage. Hart kept an eye on the exits at all times, kept a sharpish pair of shears near his right elbow more often than he didn’t, and was too fast with his hands not to have seen his share of brawls before.  Hart, or Harry, or  whatever his real name was, wasn’t new to fighting for his life.

If nothing else, Eggsy admired the fact that he never quit fighting.

“I’m not telling, if you’re worried.”

“At what price?”

“At any price. ‘S no business of mine what your secrets are.” He shrugged, hands stuffed into the pockets of his tracksuit.  “Keep them. I don’t want any trouble.”

“You seemed to want it when you came here initially.”

“I was havin’ a fucked up day. I know that’s no excuse. I know it’s not. I shouldn’t’ve taken it out on you. Weren’t your fault. I...you should know I wouldn’t have made you do nothin’ that bad. I never do.  I know what it feels like bein’ all...”

“In your thrall?”

“Wouldn’t have called it that, but yeah, that. Feels like wantin’ to get off an’ all. I wouldn’ta made you.”

“Would you have stopped me if I tried?”

Eggsy hissed. Thinking about how good the man’s hands would have felt under his clothes was going to keep him up tonight, again. Thinking about how horrible it would feel to know he’d taken him, though, that he’d hurt someone because he could. He’d be awake thinking about that for longer.

“I’ve stopped plenty o’ others,” he snapped. This wasn’t where he’d wanted this conversation to go. “Look, I’m wrong and I know I’m wrong; no still means the same thing, though. Still means no when I say it.”

“And it doesn’t mean yes when I _don’t_ ,” Hart snapped back. “I had no way of knowing what your plans were for me. I would have killed you if you had persisted.”

“I’d have deserved it.” Eggsy shrugged, repentant. “Won’t happen again.”

“I should hope not.” Hart scratched his jaw.  “As of now, you and I have something on common: I know something about you that you wouldn’t want others to know and you know something about me that it would be to my advantage that no one else discovered.”

“I don’t even _know_ anything.”  Genetic abnormality, his arse.

“You know enough,” he countered.  “The point is, I ran out of people to trust a long time to ago.  I’d like to be able to add you to the list. Can I count on your silence?”

“I never grassed anybody up, not about to start now.  You?”

“My lips are sealed.” Hart exhaled in obvious relief and smiled faintly.  “If there’s nothing else...”

“Nothin’, just wanted to say I was sorry.”  Eggsy decided begging for his life would be excessive since Hart didn’t seem to be in a mood to put an end to him just yet.  It wasn’t like he wanted to remind the man how angry he was.

* * *

 

“Well...good.”  Harry cleared his throat, anxious to move on.  He wasn’t a man prone to dwelling when he could carry on with things.  His subconscious held onto enough grudges on his behalf.  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer it if you never did...whatever it was you did to me again.”

Eggsy bit his lip again and Harry paused a moment to stare, absently reaching up to touch his own. The stuff of dreams...

“You said you’d kill me,” Eggsy finally said to fill the silence.

“I did. I don’t lie when I don’t have to and I didn’t lie when I said that.” Harry brushed stray thread off the counter.  “The only people more dangerous than the ones you humiliate are the ones who can humiliate you.  Not everyone is as easy a mark as they seem. You must learn to tell the difference.”

Eggsy swallowed, only acknowledging his words with a nod.

“But now that that’s out of the way, I was wondering if you were, by chance, interested in a job? Only I can’t run this shop alone. Business isn’t overwhelming, but it is steady and I could do with an assistant.”

Eggsy gaped, stammered. “Me?”

“If you’d like.”  Harry waited while Eggsy thought it over. His body language was telling. Slumped shoulders drew back to full-attention, shifty eyes steadied in focus, and his clenched hands settled outside his pockets.  Uncertainty defeated by a promise, by hope.

Eggsy cleared his throat and gave Harry a wary, judging look as if Harry might be about to rescind his offer right away.  Harry did no such thing, and Eggsy’s postured eased.

“I don’t know nothin’ about tailorin’, but I worked in a couple of shops before.”

“Good enough for a start. I can take you on as an apprentice, if you like. Teach you the trade and maybe someday you can strike out on your own.  At the very least, you’ll have someplace to begin.”  Marek had offered him even less once upon a time.

“If this is some kind of _quid pro quo_  shit, you ain’t gotta do this, mate. I said I wouldn’t grass you up and I won’t. No charge.”

“I believe you, I do. I’m not attempting to impugn your...reputation.”  Eggsy blatantly squirmed at the implication.  “I’m merely offering you a business opportunity.  Should you refuse, I’ll of course put out for an assistant and apprentice, but I thought I’d make the offer to you first.”

“That don’t explain why.”

“Would you believe I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet?  You’re the most interesting appointment I’ve had all day.”

“S’ppose that’s as good a reason as any. It’s not like I’ve got anything to lose. What have I gotta do?”

“Show up Monday morning, 7 am.”

“What’s the dress code?” Here, he sounded less sure of himself.

“Come as you are. If I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t have made the offer.”

“Yes, sir.” And there he sounded like a soldier, or one who might have been one had events not conspired to guide him away.  Harry had a fear of soldiers bordering on pathological.  Never let it be said that soldiers were restricted to using weapons they could carry.  He ignored the trickle of sweat undoubtedly marring his brow and prayed Eggsy would as well.

“That won’t be necessary. Call me Harry. May I call you Eggsy?” A bit late, he figured, but late was better than never.

Eggsy smiled at him softly, nothing like the fuming man who’d invaded his shop earlier and his dreams more recently.  “Yeah, all my friends do.”

“Eggsy, then.”

They shook on it.

And so, Harry supposed, they were partners in secrecy and perhaps someday friends.  Harry could do with another friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015). They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
> 
> Original post with [here](http://sententiousandbellicose.tumblr.com/post/138646231500/this-fire-still-burns-but-water-cools-harry-is#notes) in case you feel like reblogging your feelings.


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